Live Awesome

Worrying is something that almost all of us tend to do. At the same time, it’s something that we all hate doing. This alone leads to a rather obvious question: why do we worry?

Worrying, believe it or not, is really encouraged in our society during childhood. We are, in a way, conditioned to worry because we are told that it is "responsible". By not worrying, we obviously don’t care about what is going on around us, and therefore we should be spending more time doing it if we want to become succesful.

In reality, worrying only has absolutely no positive attributes associated with it. Now, you might point out that worrying leads to thinking and that thinking leads to problem solving. This is not completely wrong. Thinking can lead to problem solving, but it has to be focused, constructive thinking. This kind of thinking is not what worrying evokes. Worrying evokes mindless, repetitive thinking that is absolutely useless and only leads to more and more stress in our minds. This is only just the beginning.

 As we grow up, over time worrying becomes more than just a "solution" to solving a problem. Worrying becomes an obsession and it really leads to much disability. Scientific research has shown that worrying releases poisonous endorphins into the body that can lead to a whole barrage of health problems. Once worrying becomes an obsession, we start to worry about things that really don’t even warrant it whatsoever. We create problems for ourselves that really aren’t important and all, and we worry about them. It can get so bad that once we worry ourselves out of one problem, there is immediately another one knocking at our doors.  

What people need to realize is that worrying is absolutely useless. By getting our mind into this out-of-control state, we are doing nothing to solve any problems. Most of the time we are worrying about things that we can’t control anyways. If we can’t control things, what is the point of worrying about them? Personally, I catch myself doing this all the time. I just recently finished writing midterms (I’m a university student) and after I finished them I found myself worrying about how I did on them. This was during the period where I hadn’t found out my mark yet, and I then realized that I was accomplishing absolutely nothing in doing this. The matter was at this point out of my hands, and all I could do was wait until I got my mark back. If I did well, great! If I didn’t do as well as I expected, I could deal with it in a constructive way. At that point I would have all sorts of options, the most obvious being going and talking to my professor to discuss future strategies for doing better. Basically, instead of sitting doing nothing and worrying about something I can’t control, I must accept that there is nothing I can do during this period and I will act when I actually get my mark back and can do something about it.

The funny thing about all of this is, most of these things we worry about don’t even end up happening at all! Despite any worrying that I subjected myself to, I had prepared well for my midterms and in turn, I did well on them. This holds for most other problems as well. Often times when I catch myself worrying, I’ll tell myself to wait a few days and then think about it again. Sometimes I will even write it down so I can look again later. 99% of the time when I look at these worries that I have written down at a later time, I actually end up laughing because the event that I dreaded didn’t even end up happening. Or if it did, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

 We all know how hard it is to quit worrying, but it really is fairly simple. Like I mentioned, try writing down anything that you find yourself worrying about and look at it again in a few days. Most of the time you’ll find that you have saved yourself a bunch of time by not worrying, and that your worrying was completely unwarranted. Another strategy is just to simply turn your mind off for a few minutes and not let yourself think about whatever it is you are worrying about. Meditation or even a quick nap are both great strategies to help achieve this.

Worrying is simply a bad habit that becomes an addiction. However, like any addiction, we can overcome this. The longer you go without worrying, the easier it becomes. Eventually, you can become worry free, and at this point I can guarantee you that you will never go back to your old habits. Life becomes a whole new, wonderful place when you can put your worries aside and just simply enjoy yourself.